There are 5 qualities of great facilities managers. We believe in these so much that every member of our team at Envoy Facilities Maintenance MUST embody these 5 qualities. They are literally written on our walls. They are…

Service

Action

Solution

Growth

Teamwork

We are going to spend the next 5 posts breaking down each of these qualities. If you are interested in learning more, be sure to subscribe to our email list. You will get all future emails as well as the whole series on creating an effective maintenance management program for your multi-location company.

Solution

Every day in facilities maintenance is different. If you put 10 experienced facilities managers in a room, all of them could tell about a situation that none of the others have ever had to deal with. From cars driving through buildings, a moose walking through the front door, homicides (seriously), and a homeless person setting up camp in a cleaning closet, facilities maintenance is full of surprises.

Because of this, great facilities managers have to be able to think on their feet, be resourceful, and identify multiple options to each problem they come up with.

Take kitchen equipment for instance. A customer called into the Envoy call center on a Friday night. They had a hood vent not working over their fryer bay in their kitchen. The repair company that had been out to the site earlier that day identified the parts needed to make the repair and informed the manager that the parts were unavailable until Monday. They wouldn't be able to use their fryers all weekend and were facing losing thousands in sales.

A young facilities manager at Envoy sprang into action, researching supply houses in the area and surrounding cities that could open and sell the part that was needed. Several calls were made and he moved on to option 2 while he waited for a response.

He started calling other vendors in the Envoy network asking about temporary solutions that could solve the problem until the parts were available. Several calls later, he caught a break. A vendor in a different region had used a portable exhaust fan and flexible HVAC duct to create system that pulled smoke from a grill into the hood vent exhaust system.

The Envoy facilities manager put this contractor in touch with the local repair man, the system was explained, it was cleared by the health inspector, and the customer kept cooking though the weekend.

This was only made possible because this facilities manager had a solution-minded approach to work. He leaned on his resources, identified options, asked "Why" and to dig deeper into each answer. Stopping at the first no would have left the customer in the same situation they were in before calling into the Envoy call center.